


Two Can Keep A Secret

by Willowe



Series: Chronological Recovery [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Foggy isn't over things as much as he thinks he is, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Karen is too nosy for her own good, Matt has a lot of issues, post-Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 12:56:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4180620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willowe/pseuds/Willowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>They don’t talk about it. Or at least, they shouldn’t, if any of them were smart.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Matt shouldn’t say anything to Foggy. He can’t say anything to Karen, not for fear of losing her like he’s already losing his best friend. And he can feel their frustration, every time he comes in with the slightest of limps, the faintest of bruises, new lies falling awkwardly from his lips because the old ones had been worn well past thin. His excuses aren’t working, and he can’t tell the truth, and he doesn’t know what to do because all paths lead to him being alone.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A 3-part exploration of Matt's issues and Foggy's lingering anger/hurt following the season finale, and how Karen finds out about the Daredevil secret.
> 
> This is my first foray into writing for this fandom, so I hope I've done the characters justice.
> 
> This was also supposed to be 1.5k. I don't know what happened.

They don’t talk about any of it.

Matt supposes that he should be grateful for this, and in a way he is. Talking about personal things, about his abilities and his feelings and what he does when he disappears late at night, doesn’t come easy to him. It never has, and it probably never will. No, Foggy was always the touchy-feely one out of the two of them. Always ready to offer a hug or a shoulder to cry on, to listen to your troubles and give you advice- terrible advice, but isn’t it the thought that counts in situations like that?

And that’s just the problem. Matt never talks, not unless Foggy pushes him hard enough except this time Foggy isn’t pushing him at all and Matt- he doesn’t know what to do with that. He never planned for a situation where Foggy is talking to him again but they aren’t actually _talking_ , not in the way that his friend usually does, and it throws Matt off more than he’d like to admit.

They laugh in the office again, throwing jokes and friendly insults back and forth like nothing ever changed between them. They go out for drinks after work, most nights with Karen but some nights by themselves, and it should feel like old times again. But it doesn’t, because there’s something between them that sets Matt on edge, some tension in the air whenever the conversation lulls that makes Matt’s skin crawl because he can’t tell if it’s coming from him or from Foggy. But it puts him on alert anyway, keeps him on edge and just this side of a nervous energy that he’s not used to feeling.

Those are the nights when he stays out late, throws his punches just a little bit harder, shows up to the office the next morning walking just a little too gingerly to escape Foggy’s notice. And Foggy notices, because Matt can recognize a new change in his friend’s breathing on those mornings, something that falls between angry and worried and scared and Matt can’t tell what it is but he knows it’s not good. Those are the mornings when the atmosphere in the office is just a bit cooler, when Karen shoots nervous looks between the two of them as if expecting another catastrophic blowout before that tension slowly bleeds out of Foggy’s frame and everything is back to normal.

Or at least as normal as things get these days.

“Is everything okay between you two?” Karen asks one afternoon, while Foggy is out making a late coffee run. Matt showed up that morning with a split lip, and enough of that angry-concerned-terrified energy radiating off Foggy to make his head ache.

Foggy will come back with three coffees though, and a boisterous story about the barista down the street, and everything will be okay. For now.

“Yeah, things are fine,” Matt lies. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s nothing,” Karen says. She’s lying too; this isn’t _nothing_ , not to her. “You guys just seemed… I don’t know, a bit off today.”

“We’re fine,” Matt repeats, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

“Okay.” Karen doesn’t believe him. That’s alright, Matt’s not sure he’d believe himself either. “By the way, how’d you get that split-lip? You never said anything this morning.”

“Fell down.” This lie, at least, was easier to tell, rolled off his tongue with a practiced ease that he didn’t even bother mentioning in confession anymore. Lying was the least of his sins at this point.

“Seems weird, that you’re always falling down. Shouldn’t the cane help stop things like that?”

She’s fishing for something and Matt has to force his face to stay neutral, to not give away his worry. Did Foggy say anything to her? “Yeah well, it’s not easy being blind,” he says, just as the door opens and Foggy walks in.

He’s still tense, and whether that’s because the walk to the coffee shop didn’t clear his head or if he’s pissed at the flippant blind comment to Karen, Matt doesn’t know. But he sets Matt’s coffee down next to him with a casual, “Coffee on your left,” that Matt knows is forced but Karen probably doesn’t, and Matt forces a smile and a faux-genuine, “Thanks,” in response.

Foggy is trying, Matt knows that, and he shouldn’t really ask for any more than that.

XXXXX

“Have you said anything to Karen?” Matt asks, one night when they’re out drinking a few days later.

He regrets the question almost immediately. The night had been going well, Foggy’s laughter had been genuine and they were both enjoying themselves. But that all changes in an instant, Foggy tensing up and his heart racing slightly and Matt knows, he _knows_ , that this isn’t going to end well.

“Like what?” Foggy’s voice is quiet, calm, but Matt knows he’s anything but calm at the moment and Matt hates when he gets like this because he was never like this before, and Matt hates the reminder of how much has changed. “Like your vigilante alter-ego? You really think I said something to her about that?”

“She was asking questions the other day,” Matt tries to explain, his own heart racing in response to Foggy’s anger. “About where I got my split lip, about why I’m always bruised-”

“Yeah, well maybe that’s because you’re just a shit liar and she actually cares about your dumb ass!”

“Foggy-” Matt tries, but Foggy pushes his chair back, standing up and grabbing his coat.

“I’ll pay the tab,” Foggy says. “See you tomorrow.”

Matt sits at the bar, not moving for several long minutes. He’s glad he’s wearing the glasses, glad no one can really read him like this- no one except Foggy, and Foggy’s not here right now.

Matt doesn’t know how to not have Foggy as a friend. He accepted that, during those hellish days after Foggy found out the truth about the Daredevil, but it scares him sometimes how deeply afraid he really is of saying the wrong thing and losing Foggy forever. One day, he’ll really fuck things up and Foggy won’t be able to forgive him again. Matt knows that that’s the only end of this road they’re walking- heartache, and half-assed apologies, and a friendship ruined beyond repair.

So Matt should be happy that they aren’t really talking about this. He should have known that Foggy kept his word, that he’s not saying anything to Karen, and he should keep his own damn mouth shut. He should just leave things alone, even when the tension in the room makes him want to claw his own skin off, because every time he tries to fix things he just makes them worse.

Matt drains the rest of his drink in one gulp and stands up abruptly, reaching for the cane that he knows will be abandoned the moment he reaches his apartment and grabs his Daredevil gear instead.

It’s going to be a long night for the masked Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

XXXXX

“Jesus, Matt! What happened?” Karen asks. The concern in her voice is hardly fake as she rushes forward, gentle hands tracing the nasty bruise on his cheekbone. Honestly the only reason he doesn’t have two black eyes to match is because the cowl warded off the worst of the damage, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t feeling the effects of his fights the night before.

“Tripped again,” Matt says, his nonchalance belying the fact that he could feel Foggy’s ire rise another notch as he spoke.

“Really?” Matt doesn’t need to be able to see like regular people to picture the look of disbelief that has to be on Karen’s face. “Looks more like you were on the wrong end of someone’s fist.”

Matt moves his face away from Karen’s gentle touch. “I was near the door, I banged my face against the doorknob on my way down.”

“Uh-huh,” Karen says. “Well let me get you some ice for that at least…”

Matt hears her walk out of the room, hears the small hitch in Foggy’s breath before he says, “Yeah, your lies really just suck ass, man.”

“Foggy, about last night, I’m-”

“Don’t,” Foggy interrupts. He huffs slightly, and Matt can feel him shake his head. “You know what the worst thing about this is? It’s the fact that you even think I’d tell her. Do I think it’s wrong to be lying to her? Hell yeah I do. But for you to actually think I’d betray your trust like that?”

“Foggy, please-”

“Maybe that’s your problem, Matt,” Foggy says quietly. “Maybe you’ve just started to expect everyone else to react the way you would. Well guess what? They don’t, because the world doesn’t work the way you think it does with that world-on-fire vision you’ve got going on.”

Foggy brushes past him just as Karen walks back in the room- ice wrapped in an old towel, cubes clinking against each other as she shifts the bundle in her hands. “What? Foggy, where are you going?”

“Just let him go Karen,” Matt murmurs quietly. “Just… just let him go.”

XXXXX

They don’t talk about it. Or at least, they shouldn’t, if any of them were smart.

Matt shouldn’t say anything to Foggy. He can’t say anything to Karen, not for fear of losing her like he’s already losing his best friend. And he can feel their frustration, every time he comes in with the slightest of limps, the faintest of bruises, new lies falling awkwardly from his lips because the old ones had been worn well past thin. His excuses aren’t working, and he can’t tell the truth, and he doesn’t know what to do because all paths lead to him being alone.

He tries, of course, tries to think of other solutions to this problem that he’s created for himself. He drives himself half-crazy most nights, and still can’t come up with anything that doesn’t end in screaming and slammed doors and empty offices. His fighting suffers for it, his attention divided because of his problems instead of fueling his vigilante activities, and the more he gets hurt the more his friends worry, and the more he lies, and the more he can sense the distance growing between them again.

“Hey, want to grab a drink tonight?” Karen asks one night. It’s late, Foggy having left almost an hour ago, and Matt knows that Karen was just waiting for him to start packing up for the night to ask this very question- he’s been sensing her nervousness and anticipation all night.

“Not tonight, Karen,” Matt says, tries to push past her, but Karen blocks his path.

“Please Matt,” she says quietly. “You know how things have gotten around here again. We have to talk.”

Matt almost wants to laugh at that. Talk? They can’t talk. Talking only makes things worse. But he’ll humor her, spin a few more lies (what does it matter anyway, at this point?) and divert her questions until she’s frustrated enough to leave on her own. “Alright,” he says, walking over to a chair and sitting down. “Let’s talk.”

He’s thrown her off her game. She was expecting him to put up more of a fight and now she’s thrown for a loop, made her apprehensive and uncertain as she crosses the room to sit down across from him. She’s nervous, heart practically beating out of her chest; probably not looking forward to getting caught between Matt and Foggy again, or-

“I know those injuries aren’t from you falling down.”

And suddenly it’s Matt who’s scrambling to catch up with this new turn of events, a quick shift away from his failing friendship with Foggy to something else entirely. He forces a laugh and says, “Well I don’t know what to tell you, that’s exactly how I got them.”

He wasn’t expecting this, although maybe he should have been. Karen has the uncanny, and slightly annoying, tendency to not leave anything alone until she’s gotten to the bottom of it all. It’s been helpful on more than one case, even after everything with Fisk, and he probably should’ve known that she would have confronted him about this at one point. He just needs to keep deflecting, and hope that she hasn’t made the leap from _mysterious injuries_ straight to _blind vigilante_.

Karen huffs, and Matt knows that she’s not buying his lie. “Look, I’m not an idiot. I’ve never seen you so much as stumble, no matter where we are, but the moment you go home for the night you suddenly become the world’s biggest klutz? Sorry, but I don’t buy that.”

“So what are you saying exactly, then?” Matt asks, his voice more terse than he would have liked. Maybe she’s just thinking that he has an abusive partner- not an ideal situation, but not the worst conclusion she could reach. He knows that she’s well aware that his bruises come from fists and not doorknobs- she made that much clear after his first encounter with Fisk- which limits the lies he can tell.

“I’ve been talking to Sergeant Brett Mahoney lately.” Her voice is even, but her heart is still beating rapidly- nervousness, yeah, but excitement also. The end of a very long chase.

“He has the largest arrest record of all the cops remaining in his precinct, did you know?” Karen doesn’t stop for an answer; she doesn’t need one. “Apparently this Daredevil guy has been sending all of his victims to Brett to turn themselves in. So I pulled the dates of when they turned themselves in and most of the time the following morning you turn up injured again, with what I know are bruises from fists.”

Matt forces a laugh because he doesn’t know what else to do. “So you think the blind guy is running around doing parkour and beating up criminals?”

“Daredevil’s eyes are always covered,” Karen says softly. “Because maybe, he doesn’t need to see.”

“You’re crazy,” Matt says. His own heart is beating too quickly now, too nervous and afraid to even think of controlling it.

“Am I?” Karen asks. “You always show up looking like you took a beat after Sergeant Mahoney gets criminals turning themselves in because of Daredevil. Foggy always gets upset and angry when you’re injured like he never did before, probably because he knows. I’d be willing to bet that that’s why you two fought, back when everything was going down with Fisk. And when everything is going on in the criminal underworld, you’re never anywhere to be found- but you can always turn on the TV, and see Daredevil in the thick of it.”

“Karen, stop it.”

“Look, I don’t- I don’t know how you do it. But I know, I _know_ , that you’re Daredevil. I have nightmares, sometimes, about that guy who tried to kill me back during the Union Allied scandal. Before it all went to hell. And the one thing that makes those nights better, is remembering that masked man who saved me. I’ll never forget what he looks like, and I’ve spent a hell of a lot of time staring at you. And I know a connection when I see it.”

“You know _nothing_ ,” Matt spits out, pushing away from the table and fumbling for his cane. His heart is beating too fast, he’s too nervous and wound up, and he can’t- he can’t be here, with Karen, listening to her rattle off her laundry list of everything that she’s figured out. He can’t sit here and lie to her because he doesn’t have any more lies left in him. He’s going to lose probably the only friend he has left and _he can’t be here right now_.

“Matt, please-”

“ _Don’t_. You don’t- you shouldn’t have said anything.” Matt is not panicking, he doesn’t _panic_ , but his chest is tight and his breathing is far too rapid and _this can’t be happening_. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, and now-”

“What? Matt, now what?”

“I have to go,” Matt says abruptly, because he can’t stay here and have this conversation.

Karen’s chair scrapes across the floor as she stands up too. “Wait, hold on a second!” she says, but Matt is already crossing the room as fast as he can, throwing the door open and storming down the stairs. It takes every ounce of willpower he has to keep walking and not run, his heart still beating too quickly even though he knows that Karen hasn’t followed him.

He walks back to his apartment, needing the time to clear his head, to get his breathing under control again, to figure out a plan for what to do now. But no plans come to him, no brilliant ideas about how to salvage this situation and save whatever might remain of his friendships. Because Karen _knows_ , and no matter how much Matt might have tried to lie and deflect he knows that his reaction only convinced her that she was right. She doesn’t have all of the answers, not yet, but she’ll go to Foggy and they’ll get talking and then-

That’s it. One last catastrophic argument, Murdock v. Nelson and Page, and Matt will be saying goodbye to the only two people left in his life who really matter.

There’s a desperation inside Matt, clawing at his throat and making him choke back a scream, and when he reaches his apartment he immediately opens the cabinet holding his Daredevil suit and pulls it on. He can’t fix things with Karen and Foggy, doesn’t even know where he would begin, but he knows from experience that feeling like this only makes him punch harder.

He locks his rooftop access door- doesn’t want Karen or Foggy coming over announced at the moment- and heads out his bedroom window instead.

Beating up criminals won’t solve his problems, but it might just stop him from losing it completely.


	2. Chapter 2

There’s something about crappy day-old pizza that always makes Foggy think of Matt.

Early mornings in their old college dorm room, scarfing down cold leftover pizza before an 8am lecture. Or later that evening, googling tips on how to microwave the slightly-stale slices without turning them into cardboard. Laughing over cheese that’s so melted it’s almost burned, or daring each other to eat that last slice that’s definitely been sitting in their too-hot room for a day too long.

It’s been too long since they’ve taken a night to grab a pizza and just hang out. They’re more likely to be found at Josie’s these days, and adding alcohol to their tenuous friendship reboot isn’t exactly the best of ideas. Foggy wants to kick himself every time he thinks about the argument they had about Karen, almost as much as he wants to kick Matt for starting the damn argument in the first place.

Foggy doesn’t mean to fight with Matt, he really doesn’t. He _hates_ fighting with his friend actually, because Matt gets this pathetic self-flagellation look on his face that makes Foggy feel like he punched a puppy or something. But not fighting doesn’t work either because Matt gets a new look on his face whenever he senses Foggy’s anger, something closed-off and resigned that scares Foggy because he doesn’t know what it means.

And Foggy hates being angry at Matt, but no matter what he tries he can’t get rid of that bit of hurt and betrayal that’s still festering in him every time he thinks about all the lies that Matt told him over the years. He knows, if he stops to think about it, that their friendship means as much to Matt as it does to him. He _knows_ that, but that’s never enough to stop his fear and worry from bursting out as anger every time Matt shows up for work with new bruises hidden underneath his suit.

It’s messed up, on so many levels, and there have been too many nights when Foggy sits alone in his apartment and mentally berates himself for his actions that day. For walking away from a situation instead of dealing with it, for faking a normalcy that he knows Matt can see right through, for getting angry in the first place instead of just manning up and talking to his friend, like he knows they need to do. One conversation, that’s all it would take, and Foggy could get the answers that would put his fears to rest and finally, _finally_ , they could put this disaster between them and actually move forward.

A knock on Foggy’s door startles him from his maudlin thoughts, and with a sigh he leverages himself off the couch and shuffles to the door. He looks out, half-expecting to see Matt, and is instead surprised to see Karen standing there, looking as miserable as he feels. He unlocks the door quickly and pulls it open, immediately asking, “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“I think I messed up, Foggy,” she says, in that broken voice that he’s heard too many times, the one where he knows she was crying earlier and she’s probably going to cry once she gets inside, and it makes Foggy’s heart twist up to hear the pain in her voice. No one should sound like that, but especially not Karen.

He motions Karen inside, makes sure to set all the locks on his door because even if Matt’s running around cleaning up Hell’s Kitchen Foggy isn’t going to be stupid about things. When he turns back around Karen has sat down on his couch, head buried in her hands. Her shoulders are shaking, and Foggy doesn’t know if she’s crying or shaking from the fear.

“Hey. Hey, Karen, hey it’s okay,” he says, sitting down next to her and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She leans against him and okay, she’s not crying and that’s something but the shaking doesn’t really stop and Foggy doesn’t know what else to do. “Do you want a drink?” he offers, because that’s become the standard routine for them as of late.

Karen shakes her head. “I’ve had enough alcohol to last me a lifetime over the last few weeks.”

“Then do you just… want to talk?” Foggy offers instead. “About whatever happened, I mean?”

He doesn’t know what could have possibly happened between the time he left the office less than two hours ago and Karen showing up at his apartment now to get her this upset. Did something happen in her apartment building? Or on her way back home after work? Or-?

“I think I fought with Matt,” Karen says quietly, interrupting Foggy’s mental list of all the things that could’ve happened to her.

His mind gets stuck somewhere between _fought_ and _Matt_ and it takes him a minute to register the first part of her sentence. “Wait, you _think_ you fought with Matt? What, are you not sure?”

“I don’t know if it was a fight,” Karen says. “Matt got freaked out and just bolted.”

This isn’t sounding promising and Foggy has a sinking feeling that he knows where this is going. Matt had thought that Karen was getting suspicious about his injuries because yeah, Karen isn’t an idiot and Matt’s not exactly a master at hiding the bruises, but maybe some higher power will take pity on Foggy’s rising blood pressure and he’ll be wrong about where this conversation is going. “What did you say to Matt?”

Karen sighs and looks away from him. “I told him that I thought he was Daredevil.”

Foggy could play this off, could laugh at Karen’s admission and point out how ridiculous that theory was. Sure, she’d argue with him for a while but he could get her to drop this. Eventually. He’d keep Matt’s secret safe, but only for the time being because she’d never let this go completely. And then this conversation would happen again, and he’d have to lie to her again- or she’d go back to Matt and freak him out _again_. And Foggy knows that this isn’t his secret, that he shouldn’t be the one telling people this. But it’s _Karen_ , and Foggy is tired of dancing around this issue with the people he cares about.

“Christ,” Foggy says, scrubbing his hand with one face and standing up from the couch. “You sure you don’t want a drink? Because I’m definitely gonna need one if we’re having this conversation.”

Karen inhales sharply and Foggy doesn’t need super-senses to know what she has to be thinking. “Wait, hold on, are you seriously saying-?”

“You sure you don’t want that drink?” Foggy interrupts as he pulls open his fridge and- what the hell, he might as well just grab the whole six-pack. They’re going to need it.

“I think I might need one after all,” Karen says as Foggy walks back over to the couch. He passes her a bottle, pops the cap off of his, and takes a long swig.

“How’d you figure it out?” Foggy asks.

“Well he isn’t exactly subtle, is he?”

Foggy snorts. “That he is not.” Matt is, in fact, so ridiculously unsubtle that it’s a minor miracle that more people don’t know Daredevil’s real identity. It’s a thought that keeps Foggy awake some nights, panicking about what would happen when Matt’s vigilantism came crashing down on their heads. It’s those nights that he almost picks up his phone and calls Matt, demanding that they actually _talk_ about this mess instead of tip-toeing around it, but he knows it would be useless. Matt’s made it clear that they aren’t talking about this and besides, Foggy is pretty sure he doesn’t have his phone on hand while he’s bashing in criminal skulls.

“How did you figure it out?” Karen asks, quietly like she’s afraid of what the answer would be.

Foggy wishes that he knew if the truth would make her feel better or not.

“I found him bleeding to death on his apartment floor,” and Jesus, saying it aloud like that really does make it sound awful. “He was still in that Man-in-the-Mask get-up and I made the mistake of pulling off the mask.”

“What happened to him?”

“Went up against Fisk, that night after Elena Cardenas was murdered.” Foggy sees her eyes widen, knows that she’s piecing together the timeline on her won as he continues, “Yeah, he was never in a car accident. I- I didn’t want to lie to you, you have to believe that, but Matt insisted.” He takes another swig of his beer and adds, quieter, “We fought about that. About everything. But I guess you know that already.”

“Yeah, I figured that part out on my own.”

“So what all do you know?” Foggy asks, because he needs to know exactly what volume of information he’s going to be sharing tonight so he can ration out the alcohol appropriately.

“Not much,” Karen admits. “I pieced together that he’s Daredevil from his injuries and Sergeant Mahoney’s arrest record and… Well, memories of my own encounter with him. But I don’t know why he does it, or how.” She takes a long drink of her own beer and Foggy doesn’t interrupt, knows that there’s going to be more. “Is he- Is Matt actually blind, Foggy?”

_Just tell me one thing, Matt. Are you even really blind?_

“Yes,” Foggy says, with a ferociousness that surprises them both. “His eyes are useless, that part’s true. But he has this- this thing. He calls it ‘the world on fire’ but I think it’s like… I don’t know, like sonar or radar or something. His other senses are scarily heightened and all the info from them- all the sounds and smells, temperature and pressure changes- all of it gets combined into a sort of mental image of things.”

“And he uses that to fight?” Karen asks, somewhat skeptically.

Foggy nods. “Learned his moves from a blind guy named Stick,” Foggy says with a snort. “And believe me, I know how that sounds but it’s the truth.”

They sit in silence for several long minutes, both nursing their own beer and lost in thought. Foggy wonders how well she’s taking this- better than him, probably, but he doesn’t know that for sure. He chuckles quietly, realizing that Matt’s crazy lie-detecting abilities would actually be pretty damn useful right now.

“Something funny?” Karen asks, one eyebrow raised as if she’s questioning his sanity. Which, honestly, he can’t blame her if she is.

“Just thinking, about one of Matt’s weird abilities,” Foggy says. “I told you, his hearing’s really good? Well it’s good enough to, like, hear people’s heartbeat from across the room.

Karen choked on the sip of beer she had just taken. “Wait, seriously?”

“Yeah, that’s how he knew you were innocent when we first met you,” Foggy says.

“And how he knew I was lying about the pension documents,” Karen adds, her voice quieter.

“Well I don’t have creepy and invasive senses like that, so I can’t tell how you’re handling this,” Foggy says. “Are you okay, with all of this? I know it’s a lot to take in, and you haven’t been saying much so I don’t know if you’re freaking out or-”

“Foggy! Foggy, I’m- I’m okay,” Karen says, with a small laugh. Foggy thinks it sounds genuine. Matt would probably know for sure. “You’re forgetting that I was Team Daredevil before he was even going by that name. The guy… Matt saved my life, Foggy. I can forgive a lot.”

“So the lying, and the secrets? That doesn’t bother you at all?” Foggy asks. He can hear the bitterness in his own voice, knows Karen can too, but damn it this isn’t something he can just get over by never speaking about it again and pretending things are fine. Maybe Matt works that way, but he sure as hell doesn’t.

“People are entitled to their secrets. I’m not angry that he didn’t tell me, I’m angry that he apparently hasn’t thought about how this will affect us and the office,” Karen explains. She drains her beer and grabs another one. “Look, I know it’s none of my business what goes on between the two of you-”

“Considering how often you’re in the middle of it, I’d say it is,” Foggy interrupts with a wry smile.

Karen laughs at that. “Okay, fair enough. But my point is, you’ve known each other for a long time. And you have every right to be angry at him, but Matt isn’t… He was panicked tonight, Foggy. About me finding out, yeah, but I think it was more than that.”

“So what are you saying?” Foggy asks, ignoring the way his heart twists painfully in his chest. This isn’t his fault. None of this mess is his fault. It’s all on Matt.

“Just don’t go into things guns-blazing, okay?” Karen says. “I think if anyone yelled at him Matt would just… crumble.”

“Yeah well, I’m not the one who decided that we weren’t talking about this,” Foggy says, finally finishing off his own beer and already grabbing a second. “But we’ll both talk to him about this tomorrow, and I won’t yell. I promise.”

Karen nods and the two sit in silence into the late hours of the night, finishing off the beers and just enjoying not being alone for once. Foggy’s thoughts keep wandering to Matt, wondering what part of Hell’s Kitchen his friend was patrolling that night, but he doesn’t know what Karen is thinking about. If she’s still thinking about Matt’s other identity she doesn’t mention it, and they don’t discuss Daredevil again that night.

Karen leaves sometime around midnight, and Foggy tries to sleep but he’s not sure he manages more than a few fitful hours of rest. His thoughts are too scattered, torn between angry at Matt for keeping this secret and guilty at the possibility of his actions having upset his friend. He’s not at all looking forward to having this discussion with Matt today because he knows from personal experience how conversations like this go- Matt shuts down, doesn’t listen, blames himself, and Foggy has twice as much work to do digging him out of the pit of self-loathing that he buried himself in.

He’s moving slow that morning, taking longer than he should to get dressed and actually leave his apartment, and he’s only a little surprised that Karen is already in the office when he arrives. What does surprise him, though, is that Matt’s office is still empty and dark.

“He’s not in yet?” Foggy asks Karen as he sets his bag down on his desk and goes to grab the first of what he suspected would be many cups of coffee that day.

“I haven’t seen him, and it doesn’t look like his office has been touched since last night,” Karen says. “His bag and his papers are all still in there, where they were before he bolted.”

Foggy scrubs at his face, wondering what sins he committed in his life to be stuck with Matt “Never-Uses-His-Goddamned-Phone” Murdock for a best friend. “Did you try calling him?”

“Yeah, no response.”

“Let me try him,” Foggy says. “Maybe he just overslept.”

The look on Karen’s face tells him exactly how unlikely that is, but Foggy keeps his hopes up as his phone rings once, twice, three times-

 _This is Matt Murdock. Leave a message_.

“Matt? Hey buddy, where are you? Look… I know Karen freaked you out yesterday, but just come down to the office and we’ll talk about everything, yeah? Or at least give us a call so we know you’re alright.”

“So what do we do?” Karen asks as Foggy hangs up and pockets his phone.

In the past, they wouldn’t have done anything. Left him alone, kept calling and worrying, but otherwise assuming that everything was okay. Now, with Matt’s secret out, Foggy doesn’t know if he’s physically capable of doing _nothing_. “I’m going to check Matt’s apartment,” Foggy says, already walking into his office to fish out his key ring. “You should stay here, in case he calls.”

Karen nods, face pinched with worry like it was during the explosions in Hell’s Kitchen, during the long days of his first fight with Matt, during every instance when Matt disappears and they don’t know where he is. Foggy hates seeing that look on her face, and hates that Matt’s the reason it’s always there. But Matt’s guilt runs deep on this issue, Foggy knows that, and even his current burst of frustration at his friend won’t last long when he sees Matt and sees that wounded duckling look on his face.

It’s not really fair, Foggy thinks as he leaves the office and starts off towards Matt’s apartment, that Matt has a way of disarming all of Foggy’s well-justified arguments just by looking pathetic. But that’s the status quo of their friendship, or at least it was back when they were friends who actually spoke to each other. Not whatever they’d become since he gave up trying to find the words to say what he really needed to say, and Matt closed off from him rather than trying to work things out.

He reaches Matt’s apartment fairly quickly and decides to try the front door first, pounding on the door and yelling out, “Murdock! If you’re in there, ignoring our calls is a pretty dick move! C’mon, man, open up!”

But no one comes to the door, and there isn’t even any sounds coming from the inside of the apartment. Foggy sighs and heads up, to the roof access door that he knows Matt keeps open because it makes it easier for him to return after a night patrolling Hell’s Kitchen. But when he tries to pull the door open he finds that that one’s locked too and shit, this is getting weird and he doesn’t have a good feeling about this.

He fumbles with his keys as he makes his way back downstairs, hoping that he still has Matt’s spare on his key ring and crowing triumphantly when he finally finds it. He unlocks the door and slips inside, calling out, “Matt? I’m coming in. Karen is worried about you, she didn’t mean to freak you out last night…”

Foggy’s skin crawls with a sense of déjà vu, remembering all too clearly the last time he entered Matt’s apartment when his friend wasn’t here. But the apartment is actually empty this time, no broken coffee tables on the floor and no Matt bleeding to death in his living room. No Matt at all, actually, and Foggy can feel his heart start to race a little bit more.

“Matt, where are you?” he asks aloud, not expecting an answer but hoping beyond hope that he’d get one anyway. He doesn’t, and Foggy is left standing in the middle of Matt’s living room, wondering what the hell his next move is supposed to be.

_Karen. Karen. Karen._

Foggy recognizes the sound as Matt’s phone, coming from the kitchen, and he races towards it, fumbling to answer the call before it goes to voicemail. “Karen, it’s me. He’s not here,” he says, looking around the apartment again as if he somehow missed Matt the first time. “Please tell me he made it to the office.”

 _“No, and I still haven’t heard from him,”_ Karen says. He doesn’t need Matt listening in to the conversation to know that she’s worried. _“Do you think… I mean, if he went out last night…”_

Foggy’s been trying not to think about that possibility, about Matt lying in some alley or warehouse, half-dead or worse. His eyes land on the closet door under the stairs and he walks back over there. “Hold on, let me check something.” The door is open already, not a good sign because Matt always keeps it locked, and Foggy’s heart sinks when he opens the chest and sees that Matt’s Daredevil costume is missing. “His gear isn’t here, Karen.”

He hears her sharp inhale through the phone, knows that they’re both know thinking the worst because what else are they supposed to think? _“I’m coming over,”_ Karen says.

“No! There’s no point in you coming here if he’s not here,” Foggy says.

_“I’m not sitting in the office while Matt’s… god knows where!”_

The inklings of an idea are starting to come to Foggy and please, god, let this work. “You said you talked to Sergeant Mahoney, to figure out if his Daredevil-assisted arrests corresponded to Matt’s injuries?”

_“Yeah? So what?”_

“So, what if there was another arrest last night?”

There’s a beat of silence, and then Karen breathes, _“Foggy you’re a genius! I’ll meet you at the precinct.”_

Foggy ends the call and takes a minute to scroll through Matt’s contacts, hoping that his friend was smart enough to add his speed-dial nurse to this phone as well. But Claire’s name doesn’t show up in his contacts list and Foggy curses, pocketing the phone angrily. This is exactly what the last few weeks have been like, stress and anger and worry about what condition Matt’s in when he shows up for work, only this time it’s a thousand times worse because Matt’s not even here for him to glower at and avoid.

When they find Matt, Foggy’s pretty sure he’s going to kill him. If he isn’t already-

No. He’s not thinking about that.

He can’t think about that.

XXXXX

Karen is already talking to Brett behind the precinct when Foggy arrives. Matt would’ve been able to hear their quiet conversation but Foggy can’t, and Karen quickly fills him in. “There was another arrest last night, down by the docks,” she says. “But Sergeant Mahoney says the cops scoured the area, and there was no sign of anyone else.”

“We never find anyone else at the Daredevil crime scenes,” Brett says. “But there was a lot of blood this time, definitely not all of it from the guys we arrested. The trail disappeared after a block or so, but there are a couple abandoned warehouses in that area he could be holding up in. No one had a chance to check them last night, we were too busy getting his victims down to the station.”

“How much did you tell him?” Foggy hisses as Brett goes back inside and they hail a cab. If Matt got that freaked out about Karen knowing, Foggy doesn’t even want to think about what his reaction will be to Brett finding out as well.

“Nothing that would lead him to suspect that Daredevil is really Matt,” Karen assures him. She rattles off an address for the taxi driver and leans back in the seat as they pull back out into the street. “I’m more worried about what he said about that blood.”

Foggy feels his stomach twist up into knots. “Matt’s lost a lot of blood before. He’ll be okay,” he says.

It’s a lie, and he’s glad that Matt’s not there to call him out on it.

The cab ride seems to take forever and as soon as they reach their destination Foggy bolts from the cab, leaving Karen to fumble with paying the driver and following him out. “Foggy! Calm down, we’ll find him,” she says, putting a gentle hand on his arm.

Foggy runs his hand through his hair, looking at all the buildings around them. “There are too many places he could be hiding. Karen, this is like finding a needle in a hay stack- or a needle in a bigger stack of needles. Something very, very impossible considering we aren’t the one with weird chemically-induced super sense.”

“Then we’ll check all the buildings,” Karen says firmly. “Every last one, until we find him.”

Foggy swallows harshly and asks the question he’s been trying not to think about ever since they left the precinct. “And if he’s not here?”

Karen pauses, and Foggy feels like he might throw up. “Then we keep looking,” Karen finally says. “And we don’t stop until we find him.”

Matt’s not in the first building they check. Foggy’s heart is racing with every step he takes through that abandoned warehouse, on the lookout not only for his friend but also for anyone who might be squatting in the building and object to their presence. But they don’t see anyone, and quietly move onto the second building.

It’s dark in the warehouse, Foggy’s eyes struggling to adjust to the low levels of light, and he thinks that’s why it takes him so long to see the dark shape curled up in the corner. “Matt? Matty!” he calls out, racing towards the figure that he knows, he _knows_ , is his friend.

Matt’s unconscious, still in his Daredevil costume, his burner phone abandoned at his side where it fell out of his hand. His other hand is clutching his abdomen tightly, and Foggy can see the dark stain of blood even against the red of his suit. His hands are shaking as he fumbles to find a pulse at Matt’s neck, too scared to even breathe as he finds it, thin and almost undetectable, but it’s there.

“Call 911,” he tells Karen. “We need to get him to the hospital, now.”

Foggy doesn’t give a damn what Matt’s opinion of hospitals is, or what he’ll say when he wakes up, because he is not losing his friend. He is not letting Matt die on his watch before he even has a chance to actually air out everything between them.

“I’m not losing you Matt, do you hear me?” he whispers as he gently pulls the Daredevil cowl away from Matt’s face. “You are not allowed to die. Not today.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little *handwaving* with regards to the medical stuff in this part, folks.

It’s dark. Matt can hear the beeping of some electrical equipment, can smell something that he should be able to place but can’t, can feel the scratch of some uncomfortable fabric against his skin, but the pieces of information aren’t coming together to give him a clear picture of where he is. Everything is hazy around the edges, dulled by something working his way through his system and- was he drugged? Did one of the gangs manage to capture him?

One of the machines starts beeping faster and Matt realizes what it is. Heart monitor. So was this a-?

“Easy, Matt, you’re safe,” a familiar voice says. “You’re in the hospital, but it’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

“Why?” Matt asks, his voice raspy and his throat painfully dry. “How…?”

“Karen and I found you,” Foggy says. Matt can tell where his voice his coming from, can catch occasional whiffs of the shampoo he uses and sense maybe half of the motions he’s making, and it makes his mental image of Foggy turn out blurry, disorienting to focus on for too long. “We got you out of the suit before bringing you here. The doctors think it was a kidnapping and mugging.”

Karen. Karen knew. _I know that you’re Daredevil_ , her voice echoes in his mind and this is bad. She’s not supposed to know. She’ll leave him, just like Foggy is going to leave him.

“We aren’t going anywhere,” Karen says, her voice soft and soothing. He likes the way it sounds, likes listening to her talk rather than the screen reader software that he’s forced to use. He hears her chuckle and then she says, “Just get some rest. We’ll be here when you wake up.”

Rest. Rest is good. Matt can do that.

XXXXX

When Matt wakes up again he picks up on _hospital_ and _drugged_ a lot quicker than he did before. They must have lowered the dose of whatever he’s on because he knows that he’s not alone in the room when he wakes up, but it still takes him a moment to piece together that Karen is on his left and Foggy is standing a little closer on his right. But his senses are on the fritz, shifting between hyper-sensitive and dulled almost to the point of normalcy, and the rolling motion is making him uncomfortably nauseous.

He wishes that keeping his eyes closed would help, but it doesn’t. Nothing helps when he’s drugged like this.

He _hates_ hospitals.

He forces his eyes to open, knows that it won’t help his sense calm down but at least it lets his friends know that he’s awake now. He senses Karen’s movements and he’s so focused on how every shift of her body appears hyper-sharp in his mind that he misses Foggy’s movement entirely until a warm hand lands on his arm. He jerks back immediately before he consciously forces his concentration to shift focus and the blurred and disorganized information coalesces into the familiar shape of _Foggy_.

“Sorry,” he whispers, his voice sounding too loud even in his own ears. Foggy’s heart is beating rapidly and his friend smells like stale sweat and dried tears, the familiar signs that Foggy had been worried about him- probably still was, because his breathing is a bit too heavy still and he’s shaking slightly. Or that could just be Matt’s senses overwhelming him again, making this mental image of his friend vibrate in his mind’s eye. He can’t be sure.

He’s used to Foggy being the one calm point in center of his world on fire, the one person he can focus on and have everything make sense. But Foggy is just too _much_ right now, focusing on anything is just too much for him- but not focusing on him makes the background hospital noises jump out, too loud and too overwhelming, and he hates this, hates feeling out of control like he does now. “What… did they drug… me with?” he asks slowly, speaking taking more effort than he’s used to.

“Morphine, I think,” Foggy says, and his voice is too loud too- everything is too loud and Matt whimpers, closing his eyes even though he knows that won’t do anything to block things out.

“Matt? Are you okay?” Foggy’s voice is softer this time, and Matt manages to sense the movement of his hand just before he touches Matt’s arm- enough to hold himself still, but even Foggy’s gentle touch feels like sandpaper against his skin and he wriggles away from it.

“Sorry,” he says again. “My senses… Everything is…” Too loud, or not loud enough, and this has to be the equivalent of strobe lights in a dark room because everything just- “It hurts,” he grits out. “Everything _hurts_.”

“Karen, get a nurse in here,” Foggy says. “Tell her- fuck, I don’t know, tell her he doesn’t like how the morphine makes him feel or something. See if they’ll take him off it.”

There are footsteps as Karen leaves the room, moves to the hallway to find a nurse and- oh god, no, too many noises, too many people talking, breathing, _living_ , disinfectant clawing at his nose and a thousand different medicines and the stench of death clinging to the very walls and-

“Matt? Matty!” A hand on his shoulder again, but this time Matt fumbles at it, clinging to Foggy like he’s his only lifeline in this entire world. Which, at the moment, he might as well be. “You’re okay, Matt. I’m here, you’re gonna be okay.”

Foggy is here. There’s something about that that fills Matt with anxiety rather than relief, vague memories of Foggy’s anger raging like an inferno in his senses and _I know that you’re Daredevil_ that he could probably piece together better if his mind didn’t feel like it was about to melt out of his ears.

He’s pretty sure that things are on the verge of falling apart around him, but he’s more than happy to wait as long as he can before confirming that theory.

“Why am I in the hospital?” Matt rasps. Just because he’s willing to ignore the metaphorical dark cloud he can feel looming over him, doesn’t mean he’s willing to be kept in the dark about everything else.

“You were kidnapped and mugged, Mr. Murdock,” a new voice says and Matt jumps, startled by the new presence in the room. “The police will want a statement, when you’re capable of making one, but your friend tells me that you want off the morphine?”

Matt nods. “I don’t like… the way it makes me feel,” he says. For once, he doesn’t have to lie. “I can’t focus on anything and everything is…” He bites off the end of that sentence before he can reveal too much. “I don’t like it.”

The nurse _hmms_ and Matt thinks she’s looking at the readouts on the numerous instruments he’s attached to. She asks Foggy the occasional question and normally Matt would be annoyed that he’s being ignored like this, but he’s more than willing to let Foggy take point on this case. “Well Mr. Murdock, I can’t say I recommend this. You have an infected stab wound, and numerous bruises all over your body. You’re going to be in quite a bit of pain if we take you off the morphine.”

“I don’t care,” Matt says. “Please, I don’t want- I don’t like this. Please.”

The nurse sighs. “Alright. It definitely looks like the morphine doesn’t agree with your system, so I won’t give you another dose. The doctor will stop by later to discuss other painkiller options with you.”

“How long until that stuff is out of your system?” Foggy asks quietly after the nurse has left.

“Too long,” Matt grinds out. He just wants this to _stop_.

“What is it like?” Karen asks. “Does it dull your senses or something?”

“It’s like… that kind of bad drunk, where you can focus on one thing and it makes sense but everything else in the background is fuzzy and not all there,” Matt tries to explain. “If I- if I try to focus on one of you, you’re all… sharp. There’s too much input, it’s so overwhelming that nothing else comes through. But not focusing on anything means _everything_ comes through and just assaults me at once, and my mind can’t focus enough to tune anything out right now.”

“Jesus,” Karen breathes and Foggy moves his hand, hovering for a moment above Matt’s shoulder before Matt says, “It’s okay, Foggy,” and the hand drops down again.

“I can see why you hate hospitals, buddy,” Foggy says, and Matt has to laugh at that understatement.

“Yeah it’s… it’s rough,” he says. “Even normal hospital things are rough when I’m not drugged. It’s just too much to handle.”

“Yeah well, that’s what you get for almost bleeding to death in an empty warehouse,” Foggy says. “You get brought to the hospital, because we don’t have the number for Hottie McBurnerPhone.”

Matt laughs. “Claire. Her name is Claire.”

“I know what her name is,” Foggy says. Matt thinks he can actually hear his eyes roll, and that’s both disturbing and disgusting. “My point is, why didn’t you call her?”

Matt knows where this conversation is going and he’s immediately on the defensive. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Karen knows his secret, guessed that for herself and she’d have to be an idiot not to pick up on it now. He can’t stop her from knowing, not at this point, but he can stop her and Foggy from knowing all the details. Because the less they know what he does, the less they have to get angry about, and- and maybe he’ll be able to salvage something of this friendship.

“No, Matt,” Foggy says. “We’re going to talk about this, all three of us, like the reasonably mature adults that we are.”

The anger in his voice makes Matt want to shrink away and hide. Makes him think of _Was anything ever real with us?_ and the tears in Foggy’s voice when he said, _I only ever needed my friend_ , and he doesn’t want to make Foggy that angry again but every time they try to talk about this things only get worse between them. “Talking didn’t help before,” Matt says. “It’s not gonna help this time.”

“We didn’t talk last time, Matt, we _fought_ ,” Foggy says. “That’s all we’ve been doing- avoiding this, and fighting, and I hate that. I miss how things used to be, man. If this is moving forward then I don’t want it, and I’m calling a do-over.”

“You owe me an explanation at least, Matt,” Karen says. “Since you ran before giving me one the other night.”

“You mean Foggy didn’t share it all with you?” Matt snaps, and he instantly feels guilty when he hears Foggy’s sharp little inhale.

“That’s not fair, Matt, and you know it,” Foggy says quietly.

“I know,” Matt says. “I’m sorry, Foggy. I didn’t mean it like that. I just… I’ve never talked to _anyone_ about this, okay? Claire knows but she never got details and you’re all about the details. I literally don’t know how to explain any of this.”

“Then start with last night,” Karen says gently. “We’ll worry about everything else later. Just fill in the details of last night.”

It takes more effort than it probably should to cast his memory back to the events of the night before. “After I… left the office-” _fled like a coward_ , the voice in his mind supplies. “-I went out on patrol, like I always do. There’s a power vacuum in the city, ever since we got rid of Fisk, and I’ve been monitoring some of the larger gangs in case one of them tries to seize control of everything. I thought I heard them talking about some plan of theirs, and I dropped in to check it out.”

“By which you mean, you literally dropped in on them and fought them?” Foggy asks.

“Yeah, something like that.” Matt hadn’t intended on getting involved with them at all, was just gathering intel, but they were planning on going after someone that night and Matt couldn’t let them leave to do that. “One of them had a knife.” Matt knew the moment it was pulled but he was fighting with someone else at the time, and his suit should have been able to deflect it but- “The guy got lucky, hit me at the right angle to get through the suit’s armor.”

He had knocked them all out, called 911 because he wasn’t sure anyone would find them this far out. “I tried calling Claire, but she’s still out of town, and I tried to make it back to my place, but-” It hurt too much to walk, and he knew the knife hadn’t nicked anything too important but it went in deep, tore the wound open more as it was pulled out. “-I made it to one of the abandoned warehouses instead, to assess the damage.”

Tried calling Claire again, for all the good it would do him. “Wanted to call you, but I was losing blood and I couldn’t remember your number,” he tells Foggy, and he’s glad his senses are on the fritz because he doesn’t want to know what sort of effect that admission has on his friend. “I passed out. Woke up again, bleeding had stopped. Tried to move and it opened again… Must have passed out again, and then… Waking up here.” Karen was standing closer and he looked up in her direction, just because it was easier. “You found me?”

“Yeah, hunted you down thanks to Karen’s newfound connection with Sergeant Mahoney,” Foggy says. “He told us where they arrested your victims, and we headed down there in hopes of finding you.”

“Which you did,” Matt says. “Thank you, both of you.”

“And you still think you can do this alone?” Foggy asks. “Still think it’s a good idea to go running off into the night without- I don’t know, some sort of system in place? What would you have done if the police had found you bleeding to death and brought you to the hospital, instead of us? What would-”

“Foggy, that’s enough!” Karen snaps. “You aren’t helping things!”

“No, Karen- he’s right,” Matt says, struggling to leverage himself up because like hell is he having this conversation lying down. It’s bad enough that he can’t actually tell how his friends are feeling with any degree of accuracy, at least he’s going to be vertical when this happens.

“You idiot, you shouldn’t be moving,” Foggy mutters, but he helps Matt to sit up anyway.

Matt means to thank him again, but what comes out instead is another, “I’m sorry. You were right, that night in my apartment. I didn’t think about what would happen to you two because of all of this. I didn’t think about anything, and I’m sorry.”

Foggy sighs and Matt can feel him sit down on the edge of the bed. “But do you understand why we need to talk about this? Why you can’t keep going the way you have, without thinking about us?”

“I didn’t know there was still an _us_ to think about.”

The admission hangs heavy in the air between them, and if Matt focuses past the deafening noises of the hospital he can hear Foggy’s heart racing with- fear? Anger? He doesn’t know, he can’t tell, and Matt is suddenly overwhelmed with the desperate need to explain himself.

“You always get so angry, Foggy! You were always angry, and judging, and I thought- I thought that you’d say something, eventually, but you never did. So I thought that not saying things was just how things were going to go and things were fine- sometimes, at least. As long as I didn’t talk about it you didn’t get angry at me, and I thought things would be okay.” He chuckles, a humorless sound that would normally make Foggy flinch to hear it but his mind has stopped inputting the things he senses into any sort of picture and he doesn’t know what Foggy is doing. “But I messed that up, didn’t I? I always mess things up.”

“Hey man, don’t bring you weird Catholic guilt into this,” Foggy tries joking. “I haven’t exactly been great about this either. I should’ve tried talking to you about this, instead of- instead of bottling things up and hoping they’d all go away. We both screwed up, Matty. This isn’t all on you.”

Matt wants to fight him on that point but he’s lost the energy to do most anything but lie there and try not to let the waves of sensory input drown him. But more than that, he’s just tired of fighting with Foggy in general, and he only musters up another, “I’m sorry.”

Foggy sighs. “I know you are. But we’re fine, okay? We’re gonna be fine. I’m not leaving you that easily.”

Matt believes him, because Matt has to believe him. Because not believing Foggy led to him panicking when faced with Karen, led to sloppy fighting because he was too distracted, led to more fighting between them then he ever wants to deal with again. “Okay,” he whispers.

“I’m not leaving either, you know,” Karen chimes in, her voice quiet. Matt had almost forgotten she was there. “You’re an idiot for handling this the way you did but… I think I get it.”

She leans over him- he can smell her perfume as she moves closer- and kisses his forehead. “Get some rest, Matt.”

“Okay,” he says again. His eyes feel heavy, and it’s starting to feel less like his senses are assaulting him with input and information. “’m sorry for not telling you.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Karen assures him. “We’ll talk later, once we spring you from this place.”

“Could be awhile before that happens,” Foggy says, ever the voice of reason. “That knife wound got infected, they might want to keep you awhile.”

“Then we’ll sneak him out, hide him somewhere in the city where the evil doctors can’t find him.”

Foggy laughs and Matt, who has completely sunk down against his pillows, manages a weak smile. “We might have to leave the city entirely to avoid them. Imagine it, Matt. The three of us, on the run from the hospital, somewhere in- I don’t know, fucking New England or something.”

“Don’t think… we’d make it… very far…” Matt murmurs. Sleep is claiming him rapidly and he goes with it, welcomes this reprieve from guilt-filled conversations and his disorienting drugged senses. Someone- _Foggy_ , his brain supplies, a beat too slow- helps lower him back down so he’s lying flat on the bed.

Matt’s hand snakes out and grabs Foggy’s wrist with a surprisingly strong grip, given how quickly the rest of his body is succumbing to the call of unconsciousness. “Don’t leave,” he pleas, struggling to open his eyes so Foggy can see how serious he is being.

“Relax, Matt, we’re not going anywhere,” Foggy says. “We’ll both be here, when you wake up.”

 _Both_. The word echoes pleasantly in Matt’s mind as he hums his assent and slowly loosens his grip on Foggy’s wrist. He’s not used to _both_ being an option for him; some days, he forgets that he actually has as close of a friend as Foggy is, let alone a second friend in Karen.

So they’ll talk about it, all of it. Matt knows this as he drifts off to sleep, the beeping of hospital machines fading away to the near-silence that only dreams can bring. They’ll talk about it and Foggy promised that they wouldn’t leave, and he clings to that final thought as his breathing evens out and sleep finally claims him.

XXXXX

“He’s a mess,” Karen whispers after Matt has gone back to sleep. “Has he always been like this?”

Foggy snorts. “The guy’s got more issue than anyone I know. ‘s why I should’ve just- just manned up and _talked_ to him, instead of letting things get to this point!”

“Easy, Foggy, you don’t want to wake him up,” Karen says, her voice much softer than his was. “And you’re both idiots, for the record. And I’m probably an idiot too, for cornering him like that.” She sighs and shakes her head. “Look, the point is that he has issues that stem way beyond his Catholicism and no matter how he tries to squirrel his way out of this we have to get him to talk. Or else…”

Foggy nods. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

He knows that if they don’t talk about this, Matt is going to retreat into himself again- only worse, because he’ll probably be thinking about how he’s ruining _both_ of their lives now in addition to his own. If they don’t talk about this he’ll just keep getting angry at his friend for not saying anything, and Matt will get upset because he’ll know that Foggy is angry, and Karen will be dragged into the middle of everything, and then before you know Nelson and Murdock will be up in smoke.

Or something like that. Foggy is pretty sure that with Karen’s help they can stop Matt from complete self-destruction, but you never know with that guy.

There are just a few problems with this deceptively simple plan of getting Matt to talk. “We can’t talk about anything while we’re in the hospital, Matt will just be too freaked out and paranoid to say anything,” Foggy says as he leans back in his chair, balancing it on two legs and kicking his feet up on Matt’s bed. “And he’ll just keep deflecting if we try it at work, or any time he can claim he’s busy with a case.” Which was becoming a more common occurrence at their firm- and this is the only time Foggy will be annoyed about that fact.

Karen has that thinking-face, the one where she’s puzzling through a tough problem that’s left Foggy and Matt both stumped. Honestly it’s a shame she never went to law school, because Nelson, Page, and Murdock has a much nicer ring to it and she’s beyond helpful on some of their cases already. “Okay, I know we were joking a few minutes ago, but just hear me out,” she says. “What if, in all seriousness, we closed up shop and left the city?”

Foggy laughs so hard that he almost topples backwards in the chair, his feet sliding off the bed and landing on the floor with a loud _thud_ that causes Matt to murmur unintelligibly in his sleep. “Shhh!” Karen shushes him between giggles, waving her hands at him like that will be enough to make him be quiet. “You’re gonna wake him up!”

Foggy’s laughter quiets down to a more muted chuckle and god, he can’t remember the last time he felt this sincerely happy. Matt’s asleep in a hospital bed, Karen is seriously contemplating kidnapping him and leaving the city, and Foggy is _still_ so happy he could cry. And he might too, could blame it on laughing too hard or something, he doesn’t even care. For the first time in a long time he feels like things might actually be okay again, like he might get his friendship with Matt back and get the office back to normal, and right now he’s willing to go along with any of Karen’s crazy plans if it means that can happen.

“Karen, if you can get him in the car or on a train somewhere, I will personally pay for all vacation expenses,” Foggy says with forced seriousness, before he cracks up again and has to cover his mouth for fear of waking Matt up with his laughter.

He’ll talk to Matt, like he should’ve done weeks ago, and he’ll deal with whatever self-flagellation Matt conjures up for himself as well. Now that Karen knows as well, there’s nothing Matt Murdock can throw at them that they can’t handle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't want to promise a sequel (because that always ends badly for me) but if I wrote a continuation with the three of them outside the city, actually attempting to talk to each other and deal with their issues (and maaaybe Karen's revelation about Wesley) would that be a thing people were interested in?
> 
> ETA: Wow! I wasn't expecting such a response to this fic already! I'm definitely gonna be writing a sequel to it- no promises when that will be finished, but hopefully soon! In the meantime, I started a series for these fics so you can subscribe to that if you want to know when the next part is posted. Thank you so, so much for all the kind comments!


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